


texas reznikoff

by davidfincher



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Established Relationship, M/M, Not A Fix-It, i'm hurt, idk what this is i just needed to get my feelings out ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 22:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19160029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davidfincher/pseuds/davidfincher
Summary: Quantum physics was never Valery’s strong suit. It required too much philosophy for his tastes. But he knew about alternate universes. He thought about them often, nowadays.





	texas reznikoff

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from one of my favorite mitski songs: [see the trees' shadows lie in black pools in the lawns / you're the breeze in my austin nights](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTv_4TwwRPw)

Valery realizes that he always sees Boris the best in the half-light, in the spaces where shadows abound and light flickers over his face, catching the moment his hard blue eyes twinkled in the dark Pripyat street. Boris’s eyes were icy; the difference between a white winter and a nuclear winter, the way things seem normal until they decidedly aren’t. 

_I think you and I should take a walk._

_It’s late. I’m tired._

_We’re taking a walk._

They speak only in gruff whispers, in oblique code, and meander through narrow alleyways and abandoned lots, to try and escape the state’s eyes and ears. Those secret places are the safest. The KGB, much like the radiation spewing from Chernobyl’s heart, was everywhere, always. As it turns out, two dying old men still have a few secrets to keep. In these moments Boris would hold Valery’s wrist up to his lips, feel the pulse there, warm and full of life.

Perhaps these places where they were bound to exist in this cursed lifetime. Never comfortable, never settled, but always together. They couldn’t proclaim their love from the rooftops—yes, the thing they’re too scared to admit, even in the shadows, _love_ —not like those boisterous teenagers in American dramas. 

Quantum physics was never Valery’s strong suit. It required too much philosophy for his tastes. But he knew about alternate universes. He thought about them often, nowadays.

_Valery? Is that... Is that a smile?_

The moment he stepped into that stark too-bright chamber in the Kremlin, Boris said, smoldering cigarette hanging limply from his mouth, he zeroed in on Valery and made a decision about him. Thin, red hair, acne scars, freckles, giant square glasses that swallowed half his face, lips downturned into a permanent pout. Blue suit vaguely oversized. There was grey cat hair on his sleeve. His exact words: “I wanted to eat you alive.” A muscle in Valery’s thigh tightened.

It did not take long to learn Boris was a man of ravenous appetites. Through countless dinners, he watched with heady disgust as Boris scarfed down a thick slice of roast beef, blood and drippings making his lips slick and shiny with oil. So Valery is surprised, though not unpleasantly, when the words tumble out of Boris’s soft mouth in the middle of the dark, smoky hotel dining room: “Valera, what did you think of me?”

He pretends not to understand the query, and cocks his head innocently, the way he knows Boris hates. The white-haired man grunts noncommittally and taps his cigarette on a dirtied cut-crystal ashtray. “I hated you from the beginning.” This makes Boris laugh, a loud bark that startles more than one of the diners around them. “You were obviously… another apparatchik. Cog in the machine. Intent on sucking Gorbachev’s cock even if it meant the world ending.” 

Boris, still smiling, wipes the excess from his mouth, leaving it red and supple. Valery’s eyes linger there just long enough to imprint the sight in his memory, for two, four, six years from now when he’s on his deathbed and _he_ won’t be there. He tries to clamp down on the thought before it goes any further, but it only sinks in deeper.

“Ah, little rebel.” Valery shrugs. Boris flickers his eyes above to the chandelier, which probably hasn’t been cleaned since it was installed, casting imperfect shadows across Valery’s face, like soft kisses peppered in the dark.

“So, what changed?”

“Well…” Valery takes a long drag and takes the pause as an opportunity to think. A corner of his lips twitches up, almost imperceptibly, into the lopsided smirk Boris is starting to think he can’t live without. The thought terrifies him. 

“Boron and sand. That was it, I think. Five thousand tons. I questioned your authority publicly, in front of Pikalov, no less, but you still followed my instructions, despite the blow to your ego. Not every party man would do that. I realized that you… cared. About solving the problem, not just covering it up. I admired that. I still do.”

Boris’s eyes shined. Another long drag, smoke lingering in the air, mingling with Valera’s words. “Then it was all the liquid nitrogen in the Soviet Union. Then it was lunar rovers. Every ridiculous thing me and Khomyuk said we needed. Crazy bastard.” It took Valery a while to let Boris in on his secret world; his cynical, deadpan sense of humor. It was a privilege to witness it, a flower unfurling and turning its face towards the sun, just for him.

“But that’s enough of that. What about you? When did you change your mind about me?” Half a glass of vodka sat warmly at the bottom of Valera’s stomach, a familiar fire slowly making its way up his torso and neck.

_For God’s sake, Boris. You were the one who mattered most._

“Who says I ever changed my mind?”


End file.
